It was hard – very, very hard – not to shout at her. I knew that if I started to shout, I wouldn’t have stopped and horrible things would have come out, things that in a roundabout way might have ended up poisoning Maisie. So I stayed silent.
‘Do you have a pen and paper?’ she said.
‘Janet, Maisie doesn’t need your money. You know I do fine well.’
‘I know. But I need to do something for her.’
‘Are you saying that this would make
you
feel better?’
A pause.
‘Yes.’
‘Ok, then. Send me a letter with the details. I’ve got to go now.’
‘Wait.’
‘What?’
‘How is she?’
‘She’s fine. Don’t worry. I’m taking good care of her.’
‘I know you would. I wouldn’t have left otherwise. I know she’s better off with you …’
‘Janet, please. Let me go. I want to get off the phone and get on with my life.’
‘Ok, ok … Jamie …’
‘What else Janet? What else is there to say?’
‘I just wanted to ask about your mum. How is she?’
‘She’s fine.’
Another pause.
‘Does she hate me?’
I could have lied. I could have said yes, she does, and so do I. I could have said that just to hurt her.
‘No. She actually understands, believe it or not. The whole village thinks you are a monster but she doesn’t.’
She was silent for a moment.
‘Thank you. Thank you for looking after Maisie. For not hating me …’
I put the phone down.
There is someone. There has been for a few months now.
Her name is Gail. She’s twenty-six, ten years younger than me. Apparently, she’s had her sights set on me since she was a wee girl, or so Shona says.
We go for drinks sometimes, not often, as I like to be at home with Maisie in the evenings. We had Sunday lunch together at the pub a couple of times but I tend to avoid that. Her parents and wee brother were there too, and so was Maisie. It looked like … it looked as if we were an item, as if we were officially together, and I don’t want that.
I know it sounds terrible, like I’m stringing her along, but I don’t want to. It’s just a friendship thing really. That’s all I want. But I know she wants more.
After I walked her home from the pub one night, she put her arms around my neck and kissed me. I would lie if I said I didn’t respond, if I said I didn’t enjoy it. I’m only human.
So now whenever we walk home from the pub, we kiss. She hinted a couple of times that she would like to come up to the house. That she would stay the night. But I keep finding excuses. I am not ready; I can’t possibly sleep with her. I can’t sleep with her without making some sort of commitment and the truth is, I’m not in love with her. Which is better, because when you are in love with someone, they hold all the power, and I don’t intend on that happening to me ever again.
So it would be perfect, really. I’m not in love, but I like her. She’s kind to Maisie, she’s funny, she’s … uncomplicated. So different from Janet.
She really is lovely. It’s not her, it’s me. I know how it sounds but it’s true. It
is
me. I don’t want a relationship. I don’t want anyone in my life. I don’t want to let a twenty-six-year-old girl get involved with someone who doesn’t love her because she deserves better than that. I tried over and over again to tell her but words are so difficult for me. I don’t talk easily – I stumble, it doesn’t come out right. Maybe I’ll write her a letter.
I’m due to collect her from her work in Kinnear; we’ll just go for a quick bite to eat before I drive her back. She’ll probably come up to the house on Saturday afternoon to see what we’re doing and we’ll take Maisie to the play park. On Sunday, Shona is coming down with Fraser and the girls, so we’ll probably run into Gail and her family somewhere.
Oh God. I can see where this is going.
I can’t do this. I don’t see myself falling in love ever again. I don’t want Gail to hope and be let down. I don’t want her to spend the rest of her life with someone who doesn’t love her, I mean properly love her, not like a sister or a friend – just because it’s convenient, just because our families get on so well, just because it’s perfect for everybody.
I can’t wait until next week, I’ll speak to her on Friday night, when I go and collect her from work. I can’t possibly write her a letter; I have to tell her to her face.
But then a letter would be easier.
Oh, I don’t know what to do.
I know what’s going to happen. On Friday, she’ll run to me and put her arms around my neck and she’ll look so delighted to see me. We’ll go for coffee before heading home, she’ll take my hand under the table and look trustingly into my eyes. She’ll take out a small parcel from her bag, a wee bracelet or a notebook or a fancy pencil, a treat she’ll have picked up for Maisie.
And I won’t have the heart to say anything.
Maybe it is better for everybody.
Maybe it is the right thing to do.
Maybe I can allow myself to feel a warm body beside mine, to fall asleep with my arms around someone, not alone and cold and, honestly, quite lost, like I’ve done for the last five years. In five years, there hasn’t been anyone, not even a drunken onenight stand, nothing. I’ve been … frozen.
But would she take the loneliness away?
Gail was the first woman I kissed in all that time and it felt so different from Janet. Like I could part from her after that and be ok. Like I could easily turn my back and go home. Not like when you are in love and you just have to be with each other, and when you part it’s like a limb has been cut off and all you want is to be with her again. I was kissing Gail and somehow, that sense of being lost, cold and lonely didn’t really go away.
It’s wrong and I know it but I know it’s bound to happen if I don’t stop it in its tracks.
I’ll end up letting it happen. Next time when she says, ‘I don’t feel like going home, maybe we could stay up for a bit,’ meaning she wants to come back to the house, I’ll say no and the following time I’ll say no again, finding excuse after excuse … until one night, I’ll give in and I’ll hold her hand and lead her through my door, upstairs, and we’ll be very quiet, not to wake Maisie. And the next morning, it will be a new world, a world where it’s Gail and Jamie like everybody hoped and I’ll never, never tell her I’m not in love with her, and I’ll never leave her because this is who I am, this is the way I’ve been brought up. Old fashioned, I know, even Janet said it was as if I came from another time, another generation, but this is me.
I stop it now or I stop it never. And something tells me I’m just too lonely to stop it now.
LIVES PAST
The scratchcard was a stroke of genius, if I may say so myself. I found a way for Eilidh to stay and at the same time I did a good deed because Mary hadn’t seen her sister in a long time.
It takes a lot of energy for me to do these sort of things, to intervene in the life of the living. I’ve been floating around for a while after that, too drained to do anything else.
When I came round, I saw Jamie and Gail.
Gail, whom we used to babysit when her mum worked nights at the nursing home in Kinnear. Her dad is a lorry driver, so whenever they were both out at night Gail used to come and stay at our house. I could see it, that she had a crush on Jamie. But she was just a child, still in primary school when Jamie started college in Aberdeen. I didn’t think anything of it and then Jamie moved to Glasgow for his Masters, only coming home for the holidays, and not paying much attention to her. She used a giggle a lot. Not say much, just giggle.
Gail is clearly smitten with him, I can see it. But Jamie still seems far away. When he’s with her, it’s like he could easily be somewhere else and it wouldn’t be any different for him.
The problem for Jamie is not the lack of women who are interested, it’s the fact that since Janet left, he doesn’t seem to be able to reach anyone. Apart from Maisie and Shona, he’s all wrapped up in himself and Maisie and doesn’t let anyone in.
Including Gail.
She’s so crazy about him that she can’t see it. She doesn’t seem to see the faraway look in his eyes, the way he seems distracted, the way he keeps finding excuses not to meet more often. Jamie is letting himself be carried by her into this relationship and I don’t know what to think. Part of me hopes he’ll finish with her and part of me hopes that he’ll fall for her and settle down with a nice girl, from a nice family, who clearly adores him. What mother wouldn’t want that?
But deep down, I know he won’t. Jamie’s very quiet but behind that there’s a strong mind, and a complicated one. A girl like Gail will not satisfy that side of him in the long run. I’ve always known, since he was a teenager, that he could only fall for someone a little bit unusual.
Eilidh was different from everyone else. She was a reflective, thoughtful little girl. She had a peaceful, self-contained, confident quality and was mostly quiet. And then, all of a sudden, she would be taken over by emotion and her passionate nature would spill out for everyone to see. She felt things deeply – a song, a beautiful sight would move her to tears. I suppose you could say about her that still waters run deep – like her mother used to say about her, yet somehow critically. Eilidh made me think of someone who lived before, as if her emotions came from somewhere well beyond her years. Once she did a reading in the community centre, at a charity do organised by her school. It was a beautiful poem by Sorley MacLean, ‘Hallaig’. You could see the emotion running through her body, the intensity of her feeling. The hall fell very quiet and still, I felt tears well up, and as I looked around I noticed that quite a few people had shiny eyes.
Nothing in Eilidh’s nature seemed to be grey or lukewarm – she was either black or white, scalding or icy. I could see why she adored Flora: they both had a reserved exterior and a passionate, warm nature, and shared a love of books, music and nature. All this seemed to have skipped a generation: Rhona, Eilidh’s mum, is completely different. She’s somehow lacking in warmth, especially physical warmth. I know that Rhona loves Eilidh, in her own way, but I could see how hard it was for them to understand each other. Eilidh was so hurt by her mum’s coldness. Katrina was loud, lively, chatty and loved to be the centre of attention. She always made a point of reminding everybody that she was prettier, more likeable and all-round cleverer than her sister. She and her mum were as thick as thieves and Katrina couldn’t put a foot wrong in her eyes. Don’t get me wrong, she’s not nasty or anything – she’s just wearisome and the way she’d constantly put Eilidh down irritated me to no end.
With Eilidh, there was so much bubbling under the surface. There was something about her, something vulnerable, yet strong … if you saw it then you could never look away.
It wasn’t long after she moved to Glen Avich that her and Jamie became friends. Jamie started looking for her after school; they’d do their homework together in my house or go to Flora’s shop to sit in the back room with a bag of sweets that Flora would invariably treat them with. At that age, it’s not easy for a boy and a girl to be friends: when they are younger, nobody gives a second thought about it, but at eleven, it all appears under a new light.
For Eilidh and Jamie it didn’t get to that stage, because very soon after the beginning of their friendship, to everybody’s dismay, Eilidh left. Jamie had made her a wee keepsake in his father’s workshop, a necklace with a pendant shaped like a deer, Eilidh’s favourite animal. It was beautiful. Jamie was – he
is
– incredibly talented. He never gave it to her, though. I asked him why, but he just shrugged his shoulders. I never saw the necklace again.
Jamie had a few girlfriends on and off while at university but since he came home and took over his father’s business, there wasn’t anyone for a long time. He had a lot of friends and they would happily live as bachelors. Then one by one, his friends settled down and started to have children, and Jamie didn’t seem interested in anyone, though quite a few girls were interested in him.
When Janet came on the scene, I wasn’t surprised – she had something about her that was strong, uncommon and … poetic. What I couldn’t see then was that as much as Janet seemed perfect for Jamie, Jamie wasn’t perfect for her. For her, it turned out to be little more than a holiday romance with life-changing consequences.
Which is why I’m suspending my judgement now. Maybe Gail seems like a safe harbour now, after the storm of Janet.
Then why does he still look so lonely?
Now that Eilidh is back, anything could happen. Especially with a little help from me.
She looks so withdrawn right now, like she doesn’t want to let anyone in. She is so thin and frail, her eyes are haunted. When I saw her standing in front of Peggy’s house, trembling with nerves as she waited for Peggy to open the door, I so wished I could have put my arms around her, like a long lost daughter. Hold her in my arms like the wee girl she used to be.
I can’t believe her life turned out the way it did, after so much promise. I know that she never got on with her mum and her sister, and didn’t have much of a relationship with her father, but she seemed so happy when she first got together with Tom. She brought him up to meet Flora and Peggy – handsome man, smartly dressed, and a
doctor
. Everybody was impressed, except the very people he was there to meet, Eilidh’s gran and aunt. They weren’t convinced. They didn’t say but we’ve known each other since we were all in our prams, so I could see it. I’m not sure why. It turns out they were right, it didn’t work out at all.